The City of Ventura, CA; City of Winston-Salem, NC; Orange County, CA; and San Bernardino, CA recently retained the firm to evaluate their respective maintenance operations.

Ventura, with a population of 104,000, is located about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles. LA Consulting is assisting the Public Works Department in improving wastewater, traffic, parks, facilities, fleet, street, drainage and water maintenance operations.

Winston-Salem has a population of 188,000 and has 1,785 lane miles of roadway and 600 miles of curb and gutter. According to Sue Hyde, Streets Director for Winston-Salem, the firm is helping the Streets Division evaluate and change operations to provide efficiencies and compete in a managed competition process, which is part of the City Council’s strategic plan. Other tasks include reviewing the requests for proposals for street maintenance and assisting employees in preparing base bid responses.

Orange County’s Public Facilities and Resources Department/Operations and Maintenance (PFRD/O&M) is responsible for 310 miles of regional flood control channels and 419 miles in the unincorporated sections of the county. It also maintains almost 500 miles of roads for five cities and the Transportation Corridor Agencies.

According to Bill Tidwell, Manager of Operations and Maintenance for Orange County, one of the key goals is to initiate additional applications for the Maintenance Management System (MMS), which LA Consulting originally designed.

“We’re working with them on utilizing the MMS to take NPDES (National Pollution Elimination Discharge System) permit reporting requirements and using it to automatically report these to regional water boards,” Tidwell said. “We’ll be able to track this through the MMS and make direct reports that will be a tremendous time saver for the county.”

Tidwell added that other services LA Consulting will be providing include MMS linkage/training to both GIS support and on use of handheld devices; fiscal year-end reporting, work order summaries and unit cost comparisons; an annual MMS update; and preparing monthly invoicing for two contract cities.

San Bernardino County is the nation’s largest (by area), with 1.7 million residents, 2,825 county maintained road miles, and 3,000 flood control channels, drains, dams and levees, maintained by 16 maintenance yards.

Theodore Golondzinier, Assistant Director for Operations, Public Works Department, said LA Consulting was retained to investigate current maintenance operations and guide the county in choosing appropriate maintenance and asset management software and related technology.

“We have a lot of isolated databases so we need to be able to consolidate all of them and rapidly recall information for management and operational needs,” Golondzinier said. “In areas such as flood control we’ll be able to plan well ahead to get permits. The nine-month project will ultimately result in the county being able to offer better customer service.”

LA Consulting, established in 1993 and celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, provides a wide variety of planning, systems and technology services applied to public agencies and municipalities, with an emphasis on systems implementation and technical support for public works operations and maintenance. Services include public works evaluation and review; management and operations systems assistance; infrastructure planning; maintenance management training; and maintenance systems (maintenance, pavement, and facilities). The firm’s corporate headquarters is in Manhattan Beach, CA, about 20 miles west of Los Angeles.